The Free Churches and War The Presidential address at the
Free Church Council meetings this week followed aptly on the address delivered before the Council by Mr. Baldwin on the previous evening on the condition of Europe. Dr. Norwood is well known as a vigorous pacifist, and though he declared he would put force behind law to prevent wanton anarchy, his denunciation of the militarist State—this country, apparently, falling with others under that characterization—was uncompromising. The Churches, in his view, must repudiate war. The way out was the establishment of an impartial international tribunal, with its decisions enforced against " the recalcitrant " by economic and financial sanctions, and with an inter- national air force in the background to attack the armies and fleets that threatened the security of others. Dr. Norwood was described by one special correspondent as having the eyes of a mystic and the square jaw of a Crusader, and the passive resister and the sanction- wielder blended not always quite congruously in his address. But broadly, the President of the Free Church Council would seem to accept the doctrine of the Lambeth resolution which lays it down that the Churches can be called on to support no war except one undertaken in accordance with League of Nations' principles. That at any rate may be regarded as the view of the Free Churches as a whole, as a resolution on peace and war adopted on Wednesday indicates.
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